To most men this study is no temptation; to you it is fatal. I put before you your life, with no false colouring, no tampering with the truth. Come with me to Douay; you shall enter our house according to the strictest rule; you shall engage in no study that is any delight or effort to the intellect: but you shall teach the smallest children in the schools, and visit the poorest people, and perform the duties of the household—and all for Christ. I promise you on the faith of a gentleman and a priest—I promise you, for I have no shade of doubt—that in this path you shall find the satisfaction of the heavenly walk; you shall walk with Jesus day by day, growing ever more and more like to Him; and your path, without the least fall or deviation, shall lead more and more into the light, until you come unto the perfect day; and on your death-bed—the deathbed of a saint—the vision of the smile of God shall sustain you, and Jesus Himself shall meet you at the gates of eternal life." Every word that Cressy spoke went straight to Inglesant’s conviction, and no single word jarred upon his taste. He implicitly believed that what the Benedictine offered him he should find. There was no doubt—could be no doubt—that it was by such choice as this that such men as Cressy gained for themselves a power in the heavenly warfare, and not only attained to the heavenly walk themselves, but moved the earth to its foundations, and drew thousands into the ranks of Christ. He saw the choice before him fairly, as Cressy had said, and indeed it was not for the first time. Then his mind went back to his old master, and to that school where no such thing as this was required of him, and yet the heavenly light offered to him as freely as by this man. The sermon of the night before came into his mind again; surely, where such doctrine as that was preached, might he not find rest? It was true that his coming there, and his confession, closed his lips before Cressy; but might he not have been too hasty? Life was not yet over with him; perchance he might yet find what he sought in some other way. He saw the path of perfect self-denial open before him,—renunciation, not of pleasure, nor even of the world, but of himself, of his intellect, of his very life,—and distinctly of his free choice he refused it. This only may be said for him: he was convinced that every word the Benedictine had said to him was true,—that in the life he offered him he should follow and find the Lord; but he was not equally convinced that it was the will of Christ that he should accept this life, and should follow and find Him in this way, and in no other. Had he been as clear of this as of the truth of Cressy’s words, then indeed would his turning away have been a clear denial of Jesus Christ; but it was the voice of Cressy that spoke to him, and not the voice of Christ; it came to him with a conviction and a power all but irresistible, but it failed to